hello and welcome to my easy-to-understand guide to the component 1 a level Media Studies exam in this video I'm gonna go through what the papers are gonna look like what you should be looking out for timing and I'm gonna show you a physical example of a paper that is freely available on the examples website just so that you can be prepared and know what to expect from the actual paper itself obviously quick proviso I cannot anticipate any questions as long as you are looking at it and just looking at the structure of the paper I think that's the most important thing at the moment ok so on the screen at the moment this is the front sheet of an a-level componentOne paper okay so on this front sheet this is exactly what you would have in the exam obviously yours won't say sample assessment materials on it so it would be a real paper but you can see it is 2 hours and 15 minutes for component 1 and you will get an 8 page answer booklet with it and there will be a video resource that you will get shown in the exam for the first question and there will be a print resource to use with the second question you have to answer every question on the paper so there's no optional questions you answer every single one the important thing if you are worried about timing is the on the front cover it does give you some advice about how long to spend on the two sections so it tells you that it ideally you should be spending an hour and a half on section a and 45 minutes on section B section B is always going to be 45 marks so 45 marks 45 minutes means that section B you should be spending a minute per mark on those questions my advice would be to a make sure you can tell the time which I appreciate is a big deal for some people and B when you get in that exam as soon as you get in there look at the end time calculate 45 minutes back from the end and make sure you keep an eye on that time because that is the time where you absolutely must change to the section B questions because that will then give you those minute per mark for the 45 marks for section B if you don't change over to Section B when you've got 45 minutes left and you've over run on section a it's highly likely you will run out of time all it takes is a minute here or a minute there and you will inevitably end up missing like a 12 mark question on section B and that will drop your grade down massively so when you get in the exam you look at the end time work out 45 minutes before then and know that that is the time you're going to swap to Section B without fail so this is the first page of questions this is section a section a will always include a media language question and a representation question now because of the way the exam is structured I don't know if it will be the media language question first or the representation question first they will mix it up depending on the year what you have to remember is the media language question is always worth less marks than the representation question 1 and the media language question will always be on a unseen product or product where is the representation question will be a mixture it'll be a comparison between something unseen and one of your set texts so it means that for the representation questions it's worth more marks you've got to write more it's about more products so the representation question is more important in terms of marks and weighting but it depends which question has the video clip there will always be a video unseen either from art media language or representation now in this example they had an unseen TV advert basically for the Save the Children campaign so their first video clip was a TV advert and it was in it was a representation question in comparison to water aid then they have a print unseen which they provide for you so you can see down on the next page they provided the print unseen newspaper here in fact they provide it - that's a good point actually in if the media language question is quite simple things like a front cover and there's not a huge amount to say they might give you two unseen print things to look at the media language so you just might need to be aware of that media language might might be two products a sort of one but there will always be things you've not studied as texts fee you can see that the first question because it's always a video it will always the type of video that will show you will always be something you have studied for section a of the componentOne exam so you in theory I hope you've got this right in theory you have studied TV adverts print advert so TV adverts like WaterAid print adverts like Tide film posters like kiss the vampire newspapers like The Times and the mirror set cover and music videos which will be riptides and either dream or formation so you know essentially there's a limited number of things that could come up because the first question is always a video it means the only possible thing that could come up as a clip in the exam for the first question is either a music video or a TV advert because all the other options are printed and there was always a video question so you know there's gonna be an unseen music video or an unseen TV advert as the very first question you just don't know whether it's gonna be a media language question or a representation question the next thing to have a look at is that it tells you very specifically how many times you will get shown it you will get shown the video clip whatever it is music video or TV advert three times or no matter what the question is you will always be shown it three times you will get a minute to read question one hopefully as long as your individual ators are doing their job you will then get shown the video clip three times you can watch on the first viewing and then on the second viewing you can make notes there will then be a five-minute timer on the screen and there'll be a five minute gap and then it will get shown a third time and then after that time the video will get shut off and you just carry on with the exam okay so in those three viewings you can make notes during two of them and in the five minute gap in between and that means you've got to get used to making a lot of notes quite quickly and that's practice look up practice looking at TV adverts and music videos and thinking can I write loads of stuff down in you know a matter a few minutes it's worth noting that the whatever clip they show you will be two minutes long and you will then see that two minutes three times if it's from a music video some music videos like four or five minutes long or longer so they will just take an extract from the music video they might not show you the whole music video it might just be a portion of it so it's just something to bear in mind so like I said on this one it's a representation question thirty marks I do have a video about how to answer long thirty mark questions representation questions coming up on my channel very soon and then like I said there's a lesser marked media language question which will always be about something that you have not studied as a set text but again it will still be one of the types of set texts you have studied so you know that the second question whether it's media language or representation they will they will give you either a newspaper front cover or article or a film poster or a printed advert they are the only things that could come up as an unseen for the second question on the exam and then we go on to Section B this is the section where you have 45 marks 45 minutes the questions in Section B are stepped which means that they come in parts you pay they come in steps so three a B C and D and for a and B and they're all worth slightly different marks so you've got some that are just worth two or one marks three marks or four marks some that are worth more like eight ten or twelve so you've always got to look at how many marks are available to work out how much time you should be spending on that question the shorter lower marked questions will be things like defining a word or explaining a key term or phrase you might get questions that ask you to identify maybe three or four things so maybe you might get a question like explain how different audiences reach to different media technologies and platforms and you would have to maybe give three or four reasons for those eight marks there are questions that might require more depth so how has technological changes had an impact on production and distribution of newspapers so you'd have to talk about technology but also the impact on both production and distribution so it's a more complex question you will see that in Section B they will tell you what products they want you to speak about so for example with three a they just say briefly explain what is meant by distribution but it doesn't tell you how to talk about newspaper distribution or film distribution it just says distribution so you can make your answers more general however if they say you know you've got to talk about it in relation to newspapers then obviously do that or they might mention film etc if they specify a particular set text so if example in 3d here they say that you've got to refer to the Daily Mirror to support your points please make sure you do that because obviously if you don't refer to the Daily Mirror or whatever it is they mention you will lose marks likewise in 4a they ask you to refer to late-night women's hour and the same in 4b you can't you can reference or mention other products if you think it's relevant so for example if you were talking about the Daily Mirror in 3d as long as you've got several points in that related to the Daily Mirror you might be able to put one or two points in and reference the x as well or another newspaper for example but as long as you are reading carefully the the products that they actually expect you to mention it's worth noting that for audiences and industries there are only certain things that could come up so for industries for example there's radio videogames newspapers film for this is what happens when I do it without a list in front of me and for audiences there is advertising newspapers and video games I think that's right I thought I'd try and double-check that if it's wrong I'll put it on the screen but and in audiences they won't they won't necessarily if example advertising comes up it's only gonna be tired or WaterAid kiss of the vampire will not come up as an audience's question so it's worth having a look at the specification or asking your teacher to provide you with a specification to work out what tests could come up in these different sections it's also worth remembering that newspapers appears in both section a and Section B and this is what confuses some students if you get newspapers in Section A it will be about your set newspaper covers or articles that you have studied with a Daily Mirror all the times if newspapers comes up in Section B you will be talking about The Daily Mirror all the times in general and the examples you should be using are either from their websites or from an entire issue or edition of the paper that you have read or studied rather than the set covers that you're using for section a and that's quite tricky to remember so just be aware of that so that is just a glimpse of what to expect from component one for a level and hopefully that helps to settle your mind as to what it's going to look like and please make sure you check out my video about what to expect for component 2 for a level and if there's anything else you want to know comment below and I shall see if I could answer